Devil Dead (25 page)

So they did get out and dried off on some towels the kids had stuffed inside their backpacks. Diana sat down on the ground with them, and they lit up a little cigarette kinda thing. She watched them both take deep puffs, inhaling it and holding the smoke inside for a minute. When they handed it to her, she tried to do the same thing. The smoke burned her throat, but she tried not to show it. When she started coughing, the other two laughed at her.

They stayed there a long time together, smoking and drinking cans of beer, and talking about that Tulane place. Each of them drank two cans of the beer, and it made Diana feel strange and sort of dizzy. When the afternoon lengthened, the other kids gathered up their things and took off down the trail that led out in the direction of the Sanctuary. She hoped they didn't find it. Luna would be very mad if they went inside and touched her sacred things. After they'd walked off a ways, the boy turned and ran back to her and whispered in her ear, real quiet-like. “I'll be back soon, and I'll come alone next time. So we can swim together. You wait for me, okay? I'll teach you all about being a virgin. But don't tell anybody I'm comin', okay? It'll be our secret. You in? Promise?”

Diana felt some kind of little tingle go through her body. He was just so cute. She liked the way he looked. “Okay, I promise,” she whispered back, and then he ran off to catch up with the girl. She watched them until they disappeared in the heavy stand of cypress trees and undergrowth edging the bayou. Then she headed back to the house and made it home way before Luna came back from town with her birthday present, which turned out to be new arrows for her bow. Diana was very disappointed with her gift.

Later that evening, well after dark, Diana sat inside the living room and listened to music on Luna's radio and thought about the cute guy. She had watched out the windows until it got dark, hoping he would come back early, but then she decided he wasn't coming back until tomorrow. She wondered if she should tell her mommy about him. But if she did, Luna would turn into Bad Luna, and she would probably punish Diana for talking to the two kids. So she decided to keep it to herself. She wanted him all to herself, anyways, just in case he did come back. He was that cute to look at.

But later, after she had on her nightgown and just before she was getting ready to go up to bed, Spirit jumped up from where he was sleeping and started barking real loud and acting all upset. Diana stood up, too, concerned because nobody ever came to visit them so late at night. It might be the boy, and Luna was gonna see him if he came to the door. Before she could even look out the window, she heard footsteps clomping across the porch, and then, all of a sudden, the front door was kicked open. Three boys ran into the room. Her mother jumped up from where she was sleeping on the couch and started screaming and fighting with them.

The boy Diana had met that afternoon headed straight for her. Spirit attacked him, and one of the other guys swung a baseball bat and hit her dog in the head. Diana screamed in horror as Spirit collapsed onto the floor and didn't move. Then some of the guys jumped on her mother, holding her down and pulling up her robe while the other one helped hold her. Diana screamed and fought against the cute boy's tight hold, but he was too strong.

Luna was strong, too, though, and she scratched and fought and yelled for Satan and grabbed the knife out of the scabbard on her belt and slammed it into her attacker's side. One of the others brought down the big bat on her head, and Diana screamed and screamed as they hit Luna again and again and then they dragged her mommy outside the front door. The boy dragged Diana out, too, and she could see her mommy's blood smeared all across the floor and the porch steps.

The boy started talking to her, the stale smell of beer on his breath. “C'mon, now, quit fighting me. You wanted this, you little tease. You let me feel you up. Time to pay the piper.” He got his arm around her neck from behind and cut off her air until she stopped struggling. He kept talking, right next to her ear. “We found that little devil-worshipping shrine of yours out there in the woods this afternoon. We saw all those bloodstains in that bathtub, so we know you and your mommy are into blood sacrifices. That's right, isn't it, Diana? You've been killing people out there. So you're a bad girl, a very bad girl, and you need to be punished. And I'm gonna do the punishing, and then I'm gonna be the one puttin' the blood in that bathtub. We're gonna have our own little Black Sabbaths and you're gonna do it with us. That okay with you, darlin'? And guess what else? This place of yours? It's so far out here in the swamp that nobody will ever know we're here. Nobody's gonna hear you screamin', either. And you are gonna be screamin', trust me on that, darlin' Diana.”

Then he dragged her out across the backyard and far out past the barn. Then the other guys came running up behind them. They were laughing and shouting and all excited in the dark night, their flashlight beams darting around on the trees and undergrowth and making shadows jump and dance. She could see that they had Luna's blood all over their hands. The boy threw her over his shoulder and ran with her down the trail that led to the Sanctuary.

 

The boy and his buddies held her captive for four days. They started calling her their sex slave and used her for their pleasure over and over. By the time they dropped her off on the side of the road and headed back to New Orleans, she was filthy and bleeding and naked and all hope was gone forever. Somehow she crawled out onto the blacktopped road and lay there weeping quietly until a truck finally drove up and screeched to a stop in front of her.

A door slammed and then she saw the big man who brought her cookies and comic books. She was terrified to see him, afraid he would take her with him and hurt her the way the other boys had done. She rolled her body up into a tight ball and groaned and shook and shivered all over. But he was very gentle. He jerked off his denim jacket and put it over her, but she was so afraid that he was going to drag her back into the woods and hurt her some more. But he just squatted there in the road beside her with his hand on her back and spoke soft, soothing words. “You're gonna be all right,” he kept saying to her. “You're safe now. I won't let anybody hurt you, I swear. You're safe. The ambulance is comin' and they'll take good care of you.”

But she couldn't stop shaking and retching, and she knew she would never, ever be the same again. She was scared of the big man. She was scared of the ambulance that came roaring down the road with the sirens shrieking, and she was scared of the men who jumped out and tried to pick her up and put her on a gurney. She shook all over, screamed and cried and fought with them, until they got a needle and stabbed it into her arm and she quickly fell into the blessed darkness where she could not hear the laughter or feel the rough hands on her legs or have to do the terrible things she had been forced to do.

Miss Mary Lou whatever the hell her name was lived just down the road from Adonis, also known as the Road to Perdition or Fantasyland, as Claire had come to think of it. To her relief, this time the next neighbor's place looked halfway decent. There was a short entry road, neatly graveled and not awfully weed choked, which was the first good thing. Number two good thing: there were no dead mallards sitting around on the fence posts sans their brown-feathered bodies and orange-webbed feet. All of which were encouraging signs that Novak hadn't taken her to the Land That Time Forgot. So far, and after riding around with Novak, she was even more satisfied living at Black's little palace in the French Quarter, if indeed they were going to live in Louisiana for any length of time. As far as she was concerned, a home sweet home out in the dark bayous was now out of the running, and for nevermore, too.

Unfortunately, on closer inspection, there did seem to be lots of stuffed critters posed around everywhere, and in a most creepy manner, too, which gave Mary Lou her first demerit: that is, all kinds of little tiny baby birds poised in flight with widespread wings going nowhere, not ever again, either. Yep, pitiful little stuffed sparrows sitting all in a row on the bannister, twelve in all and looking frighteningly lifelike, and how could one miss the rather large stuffed alligator on the roof over the front door, positioned to welcome visitors, no doubt. The large swamp fox sitting on the roof of a rusty old Buick Riviera parked in the side yard was a nice touch, too. Well, okay now. Strike three. You're nuts, too, Mary Lou.

“My, my, Novak, stuffin' critters seems to be the cat's meow way down here in kill-it-dead-and-display-it-on-the-house land, right? I've never seen so many animals with glass eyes in my entire life. Your house decorated in Early Dead Things, too?”

Novak hunched his shoulder and didn't look all that insulted. In fact, he actually smiled a little. A very little. “Yep, Mary Lou's an excellent taxidermist. Her mother was, too, before she died. She's got a big shop back there in the woods. And she buys some of Adonis's stuffed animals, just to help her out. You know, financially.”

Well, at least he was talking now. “Maybe she's the one who did that dog on Adonis's porch? Please say yes.”

“No, Addie does all her own pets. Always has. Nearly everybody down around here messes around with taxidermy now and again. Part of the culture.”

“Right. That include you by any chance? And, oh yeah, remind me to hide Jules Verne when you come to our house for dinner. My little poodle is off limits, you hear me?”

Novak smiled again but with only one side of his mouth. “I'm not into it, no. When something's dead, I think it oughta stay dead and buried.”

Well, hallelujah, and thank you so much,
Claire told herself. Novak was mysterious enough without lifeless ex-puppies and -kittens sitting all around his living room. “Well, I must say in all seriousness that it's all rather Norman Bates–ish around here.”

“Nobody who isn't weird or antisocial would ever live way out here.”

Well, a hearty yes sir and back slap to that one. “So, you're sayin' you're weird and/or antisocial?”

He glanced over at her. “Most people think I'm weird. You do, don't you?”

Uh-oh, okay, how to answer, what to say without the hurt feelings and a sad, yes-I-am-too-normal look. “You fishin' for compliments, Novak?”

He actually grinned this time, one that didn't fade instantaneously. “What'd you think?”

“I think not.”

“Let's get out and see if she's at home. She might be working at her store in town. Her place sells satanic books and black magic stuff on one side and her taxidermy projects on the other side.”

Claire could only stare at him. “Well, don't you think that's a bit pertinent to our investigation, Novak?”

“Yes, I do. I plan to drop by there and check that place out, too. But first things first.”

“I wanna go. Can't say I've ever been in one of Satan's stores. Been in a couple of the voodoo boutiques in the Quarter a time or two. Which were eye openers, to be sure.”

Mary Lou Picard, a.k.a. the taxidermy/Satan aficionado, had a home that was as neat as a pin, if you excluded the stiff and hairy carcasses displaying her prowess at gutting and tanning dead things. It was sort of fairy-tale cute, even, two stories like Adonis's house, with white paint and blue shutters with little cutouts in them. Crescent moons and stars and stylized Mexican-type suns. Cute, cute, and downright whimsical. Except that all the stuffed critters seemed to be staring right at Claire with dark and vengeful thoughts in their shiny glass eyes that looked a whole lot like cat-eye marbles.

On the other hand, the paint on the house was not peeling, which was probably some sort of a miracle out here in the damp and sultry swamp environs. The front door was painted red, blood red in fact. There was a hush over the place, kinda eerie and foreboding, but hey, everything she'd seen so far in Mr. Novak's Neighborhood was eerie and foreboding. Hell, he needed to move back to town in the worst way. Maybe then he'd get used to spouting more than three words at a time.

It was also very, very quiet, too. No shrill birds calling, no crickets chirping, no animals screaming for help from wild, animal-stuffing-crazed swamp people with sharp needles. Not in the mood, no doubt, to get their insides pulled out. Mary Lou and Adonis had probably already stuffed them all anyway. Big-time woe to any deer or defenseless chipmunks that happened by. Okay, once again, there was no way in hell that Novak was ever getting within ten feet of Jules Verne.

“Relax, would you?” Novak said suddenly. “You look tense.”

“I'm not tense. I'm worse than tense. I have an almost irresistible urge to pull out my gun and start firing at anything that moves. Why is that, you think?”

“You've been a homicide detective too long.”

Claire realized that he was probably right. She was expecting to find Ms. Mary Lou's very dead body sprawled out on the living room floor, perhaps decapitated and bleeding out all over the rug, with a thousand bluebottle flies buzzing around all over the place and picking their spot on the tasty corpse. They clomped up onto the porch, and Novak gave a polite little tap on the door with one large knuckle.

Claire took the time to case out the place. It looked fairly well groomed in a weedy sort of way. There were lots of flowerbeds with all the pretty blossoms named on cute little white metal stands, all neat and orderly, as if a librarian of satanic books that was well acquainted with the Dewey decimal system tended to them. Most were red, white, and blue flowers, so make that a patriotic satanic librarian. Three hanging baskets of red petunias lined the front porch, just over the stuffed sparrow brigade, and some gorgeous purple wisteria climbed a trellis at the end of the porch behind a wicker swing. It was a nice place, especially if one blocked out the sight of said dead but lifelike and unfortunate critters.

“This place looks like Hansel and Gretel married Frankenstein and they built a place in the swamp,” she said to Novak.

He didn't respond, just rapped his knuckles on the door again. Only a big bird in the tree answered with a
cheet
,
cheet
,
cheet
. At least it wasn't a raven wailing “Nevermore.” While they waited for Mary Lou to answer her door, Claire took a good, analytical look around for places in which a missing girl could be hidden, or be forced to partake in blood-spilling satanic rituals replete with knives/scalpels. There was a barn out back—seemed like every house in the deep swamp had a barn out back, probably where they stored
mucho
shotguns and taxidermy equipment and jugs of moonshine. There were electric lights, though, and it didn't really look like a psychopath's house, of which Claire had seen one too many of late.

Then out back came a hailing voice. They both turned and espied a woman walking toward them from somewhere out behind her barn. Mary Lou the Satan Lady, Claire presumed. There was a young girl with her. Both were dressed in indigo denim jeans and brown leather sandals and plain white T-shirts. Both had dark hair and sunglasses and long ponytails. Both were attractive in a swampy and outdoorsy sort of freckled way.

“Well hey there, Mr. Novak. What you doin' here today?”

Claire and Novak walked across the grass to meet them. “Hey, Mary Lou. Becky. You guys doin' okay?”

“We're fine. Just now gettin' ready to go in to town.” Mary Lou looked expectantly at Claire.

Novak took the hint. He was a born gent under the gruff. “This is Claire Morgan. Claire, this is Mary Lou Picard, and her daughter, Becky.”

“Hi,” said Claire. “Nice to meet you.” Maybe it was; maybe it wasn't. Too soon to tell.

Novak said, “We're investigating a case that's led us down this way. Thought you might be able to help us out a bit.”

“Sure thing. What'd you need?”

“There's a girl missin' that we're tryin' to find.”

“Really? Who? Somebody we know?”

Claire moved forward and showed the two women the picture she had of Andrea. She hadn't been able to get close enough to Adonis to show the photo to her. “Have either of you seen this girl anywhere around here?”

Mary Lou studied it closely for a moment. “No, I can't say that I have. What about you, Becky?” She handed the photo to the young girl.

Becky Picard was probably around Andrea Quinn's age. She had a very round, flat moon face and a blank expression in her mud-brown eyes. She looked like she and Adonis could be in the same class at school. She said nothing, which didn't surprise Claire. “You know anybody that goes to Tulane by any chance, Becky?”

“Yeah, I go to some parties out there sometimes.”

Well, surprise, surprise. Maybe she was smarter than she looked. Or maybe she just wanted them to think she wasn't smart enough to kidnap a girl. “Think you might've seen this girl at any of those campus parties?”

Becky looked at the photo, but not for very long or very hard. “No, I don't think so, but I could've, I guess.” She paused, considered things a moment. “How long that girl in the picture been missin'? You think she's dead, you know, murdered in some horrible way, or somethin'?”

Well, that was grabbing the cat by the tail,
Claire thought.

“Too long for comfort,” said Novak. “And we hope not.”

“Is she a runaway, you think?” That was Miss Mary Lou, waxing more hopeful.

“No, we don't think so. Her parents have described her as a very responsible kid.”

“That's really a shame. Gosh, just vanished, huh? That must be awful for her folks. You thinkin' somebody down this way's got her?”

“We don't know yet. But there've been hints that there might be a satanic connection. Maybe even a cult. I've heard rumors of Black Sabbaths being held out in the swamp now and again. You ever hear anybody at the store talk about stuff like that?” asked Novak.

“Oh, yeah. Clients have told me they hear drums and chants way out back in the swamp sometimes, usually on full moon nights. That's big now. Not just here, either. All over the place, lots of covens croppin' up in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. Their members come into the shop and buy books and pentagram posters, stuff like that. You know, all of it started back with Anne Rice and now it's the
Twilight
fans. The television shows are bringin' them in, too. That craze is makin' us some good money. Hope it keeps goin' for a while.”

“Any of them into the real thing? That you know of anyway?” Claire asked her. “Or just a bunch of wannabe teen vamps playin' at it?”

“I can't say. Some of our customers are pretty damn weird, and that's the truth.”

“Yeah, some of 'em are downright scary weird,” agreed Blank-Eyed Becky without even a trace of human expression or tonal variance.

“I can see that,” said Claire.
Right now
, she thought.

“Mind if we come into the shop later and take a look around?” That was Novak.

“Sure. Anytime you want. We have to run into New Orleans for taxidermy supplies, but I have people working there every day, except Sunday.”

“Okay. If you see anyone that looks like this picture, give me a call, okay? You've got my cell number.”

“I sure will. You wanna come in the house. Have some tea? Or coffee?”

Hell no
, Claire thought, rather afraid of Becky's dead-zone eyes and what lay behind them.

“No, thank you. We better be on our way. We've got work to do.”

“Okay. Come back anytime. We'd love to have them, wouldn't we, Becky?”

Becky just looked blank some more. At that point, Claire would give a year's pay to see what was going on inside that girl's brain, if anything. After several moments of thought, Becky nodded.

They took their leave with Mary Lou happily waving good-bye from the porch swing. Becky just stood there, probably thinking about the fastest way to raise her arm and get her wave going, too. Poor, poor kid. Raised in a remote swamp through no fault of her own.

Off they went again, even deeper into the Louisiana swampy wetlands, until Novak finally hung a right down a narrow road covered with lots of little white shells that crunched prettily under his big tires. “Sure you couldn't get any farther away from civilization, Novak? Ever thought of Kathmandu or Antarctica? The northern reaches of Siberia, maybe?”

“I like my privacy. And I inherited this place. Been in the family a long time.”